[superuser2]

Most of us are employed producing goods and services for which people are not born with an innate desire.

Approximately the only people who can bash advertising without hypocrisy are subsistence farmers. The rest of us are paid to satisfy artificially inseminated needs. Perhaps our specific industries and employers use classier, higher-quality, and more subtle forms of advertisement, but in a truly ad-free world, we'd not spend money on anything but staying fed, warm, and reproductive.

[notalaser]

The guys who spent money building on, say, the Colossus of Rhodos, on the development of scientific instruments and the pursuit of science itself, and generally, in every aspect of science and culture would beg to differ.

Besides, nobody is bashing advertising because it's advertising things. We're bashing that advertising activity that's based on lies and deceit -- you know, like the flashing neon signs that invite you to buy this pill that's gonna make you beautiful like the other girls and it's basically half a gram of sugar mixed with ten grams of Matcha tea, and the sort of dubious activity that it mixes up in this scheme, like user tracking and outright malware (remember Forbes' blunder?). And I'm not even going to get into the part where it advertises stuff like cigarettes (and I'm a smoker, I'd just rather not see this vice being frickin' advertised!). I have every intention to keep bashing this shitty industry until it grows a spine.

[redial]

Apparently history counts for nothing. If you are trying to claim the entirety of the human experience as some kind of living advertisement you have one hell of a claim to prove. Entire cultures lived and died before the first word was ever even writen. They sang, they made language, they created art, all without even thinking about the concept of money. Advertisement, as is being discussed, is relatively new, and to try to muddle the discussion by positioning it as the cornerstone of civilization is to miss entirely the point.

[superuser2]

If you believe the human experience before modern technology and economics was good enough, why aren't you living it? What in the world are you doing on a computer?

Yes, many people lived and died in an era when there was no time for economic activity beyond extracting dinner from local fauna or the land. The process by which they first learned about and acquired farm implements, giving them the time to do other things, is called advertising.

[dwaltrip]

I'm curious what led you to such conclusions. That depiction does not match how I view the world at all.

Just because an item doesn't prevent one from starving or freezing to death does not mean it is an "artificially inseminated need".

Sure, GDP might drop 10% in the short-term if all advertising was banished. Who knows. What I do know is that people won't stop wanting things that make their life better, and in general will continue to buy such things.

Advertising is not what keeps us from a peasant lifestyle.

[zanny]

I don't buy for a second that the end of advertising would harm GDP. It would take generations of cultural turnover to move people away from consumerism. If people were not being psychologically manipulated into buying certain products they don't need or want, they will just buy what they want instead.

[superuser2]

> people won't stop wanting things that make their life better, and in general will continue to buy such things.

This is nonsensical.

You can only buy something if you know that it exists for sale and where.

The process by which you acquire this information is, by definition, advertising.